The stakes are high for San Diego’s housing market as the Federal Reserve tapers the national economy off super-low interest rates.

Some experts think interest rates have been held back more by sluggish global growth than by Fed stimulus, so the “taper” that began this month won’t matter much. Then again, nobody can reliably forecast short-term rate movements.

Further increases would pile a new problem onto the region’s housing market, which is distorted by a chronic supply shortage and soaring costs caused by local and federal government polices.

Waiting has certainly punished potential buyers lately. A typical new mortgage in San Diego County hit a modern low of $1,150 a month in February 2012, but by last month it had jumped nearly 47 percent to $1,695.

Most of the increase came from home prices, which surged 38 percent in less than two years.

Last summer the action shifted to interest rates, which have climbed from 3.5 percent to nearly 4.5 percent for the average fixed-rate, 30-year mortgage. That run-up started in May, when Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke outlined his plan to gradually reduce bond purchases the central bank began in September 2012 to keep rates low.

Maybe it’s a coincidence, but San Diego’s soaring housing market leveled off at almost precisely the same time.

The median price has inched up less than 1 percent since June, when it was $416,500, to $420,000 in December, according to DataQuick, a San Diego-based reasearch firm.

In contrast, the median had shot up 36 percent before the announcement from $305,000 in February 2012, when the typical payment reached its low.

Now that the Fed has begun its “taper,” what comes next is anybody’s guess. There are lots of moving parts in San Diego’s housing economy.

On the bright side, many experts see little risk that interest rates will skyrocket as they did in the early 1980s, when the Fed cranked up rates to tame high inflation. Indeed, Bernanke has warned that inflation is too low.

“I would tell people not to panic on interest rates; they aren’t going to be going up very much,” said Christopher Thornberg, founding partner of Beacon Economics in Los Angeles. “We have a world that is awash with capital, and not much demand for it for a variety of reasons.”

Bernanke has said the Fed will effectively be stimulating the economy until it stops buying bonds completely and begins to raise short-term interest rates, probably not before 2015 or beyond.

His successor, Janet Yellen, shares that view. Both are worried about inflation, which slumped to 0.7 percent in October, well below a 2.5 percent target.

Meanwhile, academics are debating whether the bond purchases have influenced interest rates all that much. A recent paper by Fed economists found a modest effect. Others say the policy has driven market psychology, pointing to this summer’s jump in rates.

Most experts agree that, to the extent the Fed can gracefully end its market manipulation, rising rates would be a healthy sign of an improving economy. If more people have jobs and wages grow, that would help both buyers and sellers in the housing market.

But alas, this classic equation is not nearly so simple in San Diego.

Much of the recent jump in the median price owes to fewer sales of foreclosures, said Leslie Appleton-Young, chief economist of the California Association of Realtors.

A wave of foreclosures after 2008 put thousands of homes on the market at rock-bottom prices. Most were scooped up by investors who rented them out, contributing to a shortage of homes for sale.

In 2012, as prices rose in response, investors began selling their houses, creating a quick surge in values that lifted the median.

Meanwhile, construction of new homes almost vanished in the county, exacerbating tight supplies.

Permits fell from 18,314 in 2003 to 2,990 in 2009, according to the Construction Industry Research Board. At 6,419 last year, the figure was still well below the average annual 10,000 to 12,000 new homes required to keep up with household formation. And most of those units were apartments, not homes for sale.

In the depths of the recession, builders had few buyers and trouble getting financing for new developments. Lending has returned for some, especially publicly held builders.

Now the chief obstacle is land costs, a product of zoning restrictions and high fees imposed by local governments trying to replace revenues after the state-mandated end of redevelopment agencies.

This double-whammy of shortage has tilted the advantage to cash buyers and against first-time homeowners who represent the first rung of the housing ladder.

Investors have retreated as prices increased, but in 2013 most sales went to affluent or foreign buyers, Appleton-Young said.

She said tight supplies may keep prices rising this year; her forecast is for the stateside median to rise 6 percent.

Thornberg also predicts rising prices, even as he warns that the shortage poses a serious threat.

“If you think about the California economy, and what is holding back growth right now, it has to do with a high number of people leaving the state because housing is unaffordable,” he said.

In previous market cycles, an uptick in mortgage rates has caused a spurt of sales activity, as potential buyers jump off the fence to lock in low rates.

This time such demand might not materialize.

During the 2008 financial crisis, lenders cut risk by requiring higher credit scores and larger down payments. Now banks have rebuilt reserves and returned to profitability, yet tight lending lingers.

Uncertainty explains part of the holdup, as federal regulators crafted responses to the crisis, which was caused in part by reckless lending.

But early this month regulators released the new rules — which raise fees and expose lenders to lawsuits for many of the jumbo or adjustable-rate loans common in high-cost areas such as California.

So even if interest rates stay tame for years, borrowers face higher costs and fewer loan options.

“That kind of heavy government regulation is not good, no matter what anyone says,” said Mehran Aram, president of mortgage broker The Aramco Group in Carlsbad. “The market has been quite good in regulating itself in recent years.”

Aram said that the “pulse” loans of the mid-2000s, in which practically anybody with a pulse could get a loan, are long gone.

Yet experts on both ends of the regulatory spectrum say the pendulum has swung too far and hurt many otherwise qualified borrowers.

This presents economic risks of its own, because housing isn’t just any local industry.

A home sale ripples through sectors ranging from construction to retail, finance and appliance manufacturing.

Today this vital market is full of builders who can’t get a project going and buyers who can’t get loans or find anything to buy, while wage earners leave town seeking lower costs.